The Darkest Rose
by FangLoverLX
Summary: She didn't want the young girl to enter her home because of this. Her blonde curls and young face were the epitome of innocence. Innocence that Faye would have to take away because, who could ever love a beast? Faye/Cassie. Chamberlake. AU. Darkfic.
1. Introduction

**TIMELINE:** Victorian Era (1837 - 1901). I'll be trying to keep everything chronologically correct to the timeline.

**SUMMARY:** AU. She didn't want the young girl to enter her home because of this. Her blonde curls and young face were the epitome of innocence. Innocence that Faye would have to take away because, who could ever love a beast? Faye/Cassie. Chamberlake.

**BASED OFF: **To start things off, this story will be based on a number of fairytales, mostly a combination of _Little Red Riding Hood_ and _Beauty and the Beast_. However there will be some twists and turns as well, as a dark atmosphere mostly because I'm not a happy person (I'm never happy).

**CHARACTERS:** Faye Chamberlain, Cassie Blake, John Blackwell, Adam Conant, Jake Armstrong, Diana Meade, Melissa Glasser, Dawn Chamberlain, Thomas Chamberlain, Lee Labeque + Lux (Britt Robertson's character from _Life Unexpected_ as Cassie's older sister).

**CROSSOVER DETAILS:** As I am doing with my other fanfic _Mystic Falls Academy: Redux_, there will be _Vampire Diaries _characters popping in from time-to-time. Mostly Damon Salvatore.

_***The introduction to the story below, was written by **Igloosforojos** (Tumblr Username) which was placed onto here with permission. So credit for the intro goes to her. After which I'll be using the book Red Riding Hood - based on the 2011 movie - as a guideline/base. Of course I hope **Igloosforojos** bestows upon me help and suggestions to keep this story going.***_

* * *

**Introduction**

* * *

_Don't come in,_ Faye mentally warned the girl outside her window. She was used to strangers entering the house, thinking it was abandoned. They always sought shelter; the home was the only building for miles. Once they entered, they never left.

Sometimes they came during the full moon. It was then that she would gladly rip them apart, tear their throats out, bathe in their blood. Men were usually on the menu, most of the time by choice. Every man reminded her of the damn enchanter that cursed her to succumb to a beast at nightfall and leave her bloodthirsty on a full moon.

How was she supposed to know that an attractive man was hidden underneath those beggar looks? He was a trickster; had he shown his real appearance she would have let him in. However, because of her refusal she was made into a horrible beast.

Who was he to say no love resided in her heart? He offered her a chance of redemption. He gave her a rose, which was set to bloom until her 21st year. If Faye learned to love and earned the love of another before the last petal of that enchanted rose fell, the curse would be broken. She hadn't been keeping track of time, but knew she was running out of it. She had tried to feel the love that was asked of her, but all she ever felt was anger. It simmered inside her and burst out at night, especially during a full moon.

She didn't want the young girl to enter her home because of this. Her blonde curls and young face were the epitome of innocence. Innocence that Faye would have to take away because, _who could ever love a beast?_


	2. Wolf Moon

**Chapter One: ****Wolf Moon**

* * *

**1870 - Cassie's Childhood**

* * *

From the towering heights of the tree, the little girl could see everything. The sleepy town of Chance Harbor lay low in the bowl of the valley. From above, it looked like a faraway, foreign land. A place she knew nothing about, a place without spikes or barbs, a place where fear did not hover like an anxious parent.

Being this far up in the air made Cassie feel as if she could be someone else too; she could be an animal: a hawk, chilly with self-survival, arrogant and apart. Even at the age seven, she knew that, somehow, she was different from the other villagers. She couldn't help keeping them at a distance, even her friends, who were open and wonderful. Her older sister, Lux, was the one person in the world to whom Cassie felt connected.

She and Lux were like the two vines that grew twisted together in the old song the elders of the village sang. Lux was the only one. Cassie peered past her dangling bare feet and thought about why she had climbed up here. She wasn't allowed to, of course, but that wasn't it. And it wasn't for the challenge of the climb, either—that had lost its thrill a year earlier, when she first reached the tallest branch and found nowhere left to go but the open sky.

She climbed up high because she couldn't breathe down there, in the town. If she didn't get out, the unhappiness would settle upon her, piling up like snow until she was buried beneath it. Up here in her tree, the air was cool on her face and she felt invincible. She never worried about falling; such a thing was not possible in this weightless universe.

"Cassie!"

Amelia Blake's voice sounded upward through the leaves, calling for her like a hand tugging the blonde girl back down to earth. By the tone of her mother's voice, Cassie knew it was time to go. She pulled her knees up under her, rose to a crouch, and began her descent.

Looking straight down, she could see the steeply pitched roof of Grandmother's house, built right into the branches of the tree and covered in a thick shag of pine needles. The house was wedged in a flowering of branches as if it had lodged there during a storm. She always wondered how it had gotten there, but she never asked, because something so wonderful should never be explained.

It was nearing winter, and the leaves had begun to loosen themselves from their branches, easing their autumn grasp. Some shuddered and fell free as Cassie moved down the tree. She had perched in the tree all afternoon, listening to the low murmur of women's voices wafting up from below. It seemed like they were more cautious today, huskier than usual, as though the women were keeping secrets.

Nearing the lower branches that grazed the tree house roof, Cassie saw her grandmother float out onto the porch, her feet not visible beneath her dress. Her grandmother was the most beautiful woman the girl knew. She wore long layered skirts that swayed as she walked. If her right foot went forward, her silk skirt breezed to the left. Her ankles were delicate and lovely, like the tiny wooden dancer's in Lux's jewelry box. This both delighted and frightened Cassie, because they looked like they could snap.

Cassie, herself unbreakable, leapt off the lowest branch and onto the porch with a solid *_thump*_. She was not excitable like other girls, whose cheeks were pink or round. Hers were smooth and even and pale white. She didn't really think of herself as pretty, or think about what she looked like, for that matter. No one else, though, could forget the corn-husk blonde with unsettling blue eyes that lit up like they were charged by lightning.

Her eyes, that knowing look she had, made her seem older than she was.

"Girls, come on!" Her mother called from inside the house, anxiety bristling through her voice. "We need to be back early tonight." Cassie made it down before anyone could see that she had been in the tree at all.

Through the open door, Cassie saw Lux bustle over to their mother clutching a doll she had dressed in scraps that Grandmother had donated to the cause. Oh, how Cassie wished she could be more like her sister. Lux's hands were soft and round, and almost pillow-like, something Cassie admired. Her own hands were knobby and thin, tough with calluses. Her body was all angles.

She felt deep inside that this made her unlovable, someone no one would want to touch. Her older sister was better than she was that much Cassie knew. Lux was kinder, more generous, more patient. She never would have climbed above the tree house, where she knew sensible people didn't belong.

"Girls! It's a full moon tonight." Her mother's voice carried out to her now.

"And it's our turn," She added sadly, her voice trailing off.

Cassie didn't know what to make of it being their turn. She hoped it was a surprise, maybe a present.

Looking down to the ground, she saw some markings in the dirt that formed the shape of an arrow.

_Faye_.

Her eyes widening, she headed down the steep, dusty stairs from the tree house to examine the marks.

_No, it isn't Faye_, She thought, seeing that they were just random scratches in the soil.

_But what if—?_

The marks stretched away from her into the woods. Instinctively, ignoring what she _should _do, what Lux would do, she followed them.

Of course, they led nowhere. Within a dozen paces, the marks disappeared. Mad at herself for wishful thinking, she was glad that no one had seen her following nothing to nothing.

Before he'd left, Faye used to leave messages for her by drawing arrows in the dirt with the tip of a stick; the arrows guided her to the brunette, often hiding deep in the woods.

She had been gone for months now, her friend. They had been inseparable, and Cassie still couldn't accept the fact that she wasn't coming back. Her leaving had been like snipping off the end of a rope—leaving two unraveling strands.

Faye, much like Cassie, hadn't been like the other girls. She more like the boys at times always teasing and fighting; she understood Cassie's impulses. She understood adventure; she understood not following the rules. She wasn't as judgmental as the other villagers.

"Cassie!" Her grandmother, Jane's voice now called. Her calls were to be answered more urgently than Amelia's because her threats might actually be carried out. Cassie turned from the puzzle pieces that had led to no prize, and hurried back.

"Down here, Grandmother." She leaned against the base of the tree, delighting in the feel of the sandpaper bark. She closed her eyes to feel it fully—and heard the grumbling of wagon wheels like an approaching thunderstorm.

Hearing it, too, Jane slipped down the stairs to the forest floor. She wrapped Cassie in her arms, the cool silk of her blouse and the clunky jumble of her amulets pressing against her face. Her chin on Jane's shoulder, Cassie saw Lux moving cautiously down the tall stairs, followed by their mother.

"Be strong tonight, my darlings," Jane whispered. Held tightly, the young blonde girl stayed quiet, unable to voice her confusion. For Cassie, each person and place had its own scent—sometimes, the whole world seemed like a garden. She decided that her grandmother smelled like crushed leaves mingled with something deeper, something profound that she could not place.

As soon as the old woman released Cassie, Lux handed her sister a bouquet of herbs and flowers she'd gathered from the woods.

* * *

The wagon, pulled by two muscular workhorses, came bumping over the ruts in the road. The woodcutters were seated in clusters atop freshly chopped tree stumps that slid forward as the wagon lurched to a stop in front of Jane's tree. Branches—the fattest ones at the bottom and the lightest on top—were piled between the men. To youngest Blake, the riders looked like they were made of wood themselves.

Cassie saw her father, John Blackwell, seated near the back of the cart. He stood and reached down for Lux. He knew better than to try for Cassie. He reeked of sweat and ale, and she stayed far away from him.

"I love you, Grandmother!" Lux called over her shoulder as she let John help her and her mother over the side of the cart. Cassie scrambled up and in on her own. With a snap of the reins, the wagon lumbered to a start. A woodcutter shifted aside to give Amelia and the girls room, and she reached over, landing a theatrical kiss on the man's cheek.

"John," Amelia hissed, casting him a quietly reproachful glance as side conversations picked up in the wagon. "I'm surprised you're still conscious at this late hour."

Cassie had heard accusations like this before, always veiled behind a false overtone of cleverness or wit. And yet it still jolted her to hear them said with such a tone of contempt.

She looked at her sister, who hadn't heard their mother because she was laughing at something the other woodcutter had said. Lux always insisted that their parents were in love, that love was not about grand gestures but rather about the day to day, about being there, going to work and coming home in the evening. Cassie had tried to believe that this was true, but she couldn't help feeling that there had to be something more to love, something less practical.

Now she hung on tight as she leaned over the back rails of the wagon, peering down at the rapidly disappearing ground. Feeling dizzy, she turned to face back in.

"My baby." Amelia pulled Cassie onto her lap, and she let her. Her pale, pretty mother smelled like almonds and powdery flour.

As the wagon emerged from the Bourne Woods and rumbled alongside the silver river, the dreary haze of the village came into full view. Its foreboding was palpable even at a distance: Stilts, spikes, and barbs jutted up and out. The granary's lookout tower, the town's tallest point, stretched high.

It was the first thing one felt while coming over the ridge: _fear_. Chance Harbor was a town full of people who were afraid, people who felt unsafe even in their beds and vulnerable with each step, exposed with every turn. Ironically when the name of the town itself, was cheery and full of faith and peace.

Nevertheless, the people had begun to believe that they deserved the torture—that they had done something wrong and that something inside them was bad.

Cassie had watched the villagers cowering in fear every day and felt her difference from them. What she feared more than the outside was a darkness that came from inside her. It seemed as if she was the only one who felt that way.

Other than Faye Chamberlain, that is.

She thought back to when she'd been there, the two of them fearless together and filled with reckless joy. Now she resented the villagers for their fear, for the loss of her friend.

Once through the massive wooden gates, the town looked like any other in the kingdom. The horses kicked up pockets of dust as they did in all such towns, and every face was familiar. Stray dogs roamed the streets, their bellies empty and drooping, sucked in impossibly tight at the sides so that their fur looked striped. Ladders rested gently against porches. Moss spilled out from crevices in roofs and crawled across the fronts of houses, and no one did anything about it.

Tonight, the villagers were hurrying to bring their animals inside. It was the monster's night, just as it had been every full moon for as long as anyone could remember.

Sheep were herded and locked behind heavy doors. Handed off from one family member to another, chickens strained their necks as they were thrust up ladders, stretching them out so far that Cassie worried they would rip them clean off their own bodies.

As they reached home, her parents spoke to each other in low voices. Instead of climbing up the ladder to their raised cottage, John and Amelia approached the stable underneath, which was darkened by the shady gloom of their house. The girls ran ahead of them to greet Flora, their pet goat. Seeing them, she clattered her hooves against the rickety boards of the pen, her clear eyes watery with anticipation.

"It's time now," Cassie's father said, coming up behind Cassie and Lux and laying his hands on their shoulders.

"Time for what?" Lux asked.

"It's our turn."

The youngest Blake saw something in his stance that she didn't like, something menacing, and she backed away from him. Lux reached for her sister's hand, steadying her as she always did.

A man who believed in speaking truthfully to his children, John plucked at the fabric of his pants and bent down to have a word with his two little girls. He told them that Flora was to be this month's sacrifice.

"The chickens provide us with eggs," He reminded them. "The goat is all we can afford to offer."

Cassie stood in stupefied disbelief. Lux, on the other hand, knelt down sorrowfully, scratching her little fingernails up and down the goat's neck and pulling softly at her ears in the way that animals will only allow children to do. Flora nudged Lux's palm with her newly sprouted horns, trying them out.

Amelia glanced at the goat and then looked at Cassie expectantly.

"Say good-bye, dear," she said, resting her hand on her daughter's slender arm.

But Cassie couldn't—something held her back.

"Cassie?" Lux looked at her imploringly.

She knew her mother and sister thought she was being cold. Only her father understood, nodding at her as he led the goat away. He steered Flora by a thin rope, her nostrils flaring and her eyes sharp with unease. Holding back bitter tears, Cassie hated her father, for his sympathy and for his betrayal.

She was careful, though. She never let anyone see her cry.

* * *

That night, Cassie lay awake after her mother had put them to bed. The glow of the moon streamed through her window, stretching across the floorboards in one great pillar.

She thought hard. Her father had taken Flora, their precious goat. Cassie had seen Flora birthed on the floor of the stable, the mother goat bleating in pain as John brought the small, damp kid forth into the world.

She knew what she had to do.

Lux padded along beside Cassie, leaving the warmth of their bed and heading down the loft ladder and to the front door.

"We've got to do something!" The younger blonde whispered urgently, beckoning for her sister to join her.

But Lux stayed back, fearful, shaking her head and wordlessly willing Cassie to stay, too. Yet, she knew that she couldn't do as her elder sister did, huddling in the doorway, clutching her doe hide. She would not just stand by and watch the events of her life unfold. But just as Lux had always admired Cassie's commitment, Cassie admired her sister's restraint.

Cassie wanted to cover up her uneasy sister now and tell her not to worry, to say, "Shhhh, sweet Lux, everything will be all right by morning." Instead, she turned, holding down the latch of the door with her thumb and letting it ease noiselessly into the jamb before she plunged into the cold.

The village was especially sinister that night, backlit by the brightness of the moon, the color of shells that had been bleached by the sun. The houses hulked like tall ships, and the branches of the trees jutted out like barbed masts against the night sky. As Cassie set out for the first time on her own, she felt like she was discovering a new world.

To reach the altar more quickly, Cassie took a shortcut through the woods. She stepped through the moss, which had the texture of bread soaked through with milk, and avoided the mushrooms, white blisters whose tops were speckled with brown, as if dusted with cinnamon.

Something pulled at her out of the dark, clinging to her cheek like wet silk. A spider's web. It felt like her entire body was crawling with invisible insects. She tore at her face, trying to brush off the filmy web, but the strands were too thin, and there was nothing to hold on to.

The full moon hung lifeless overhead. Once she reached the clearing, her steps became more cautious. She felt queasy as she walked, the same feeling she got while cleaning a sharp knife—the feeling that one small slip could be disastrous. The villagers had dug a sinkhole trap into the soil, staked sharpened wooden rods into the ditch, and covered them with a false ground of grass. Cassie knew that the hole was somewhere near, but she had always been led safely around it. Now, even though she thought she'd passed it, she wasn't entirely sure.

A familiar bleating pulled her on, though, and there ahead she could see Flora, pathetic and alone, stumbling in the wind and crying out. Cassie began to run toward the goat's sad form struggling alone in the bone-white moonlit clearing. Seeing the girl, Flora reared up wildly and craned her slender neck in her direction as much as her rope would allow.

"I'm here, I'm here," Cassie began to call out, but the words died in her throat.

She heard something bounding furiously over a great length at a quick pace, coming closer and closer still through the darkness. Cassie's feet refused to move, much as she tried to continue. In a moment, everything went still again.

_And it appeared._

At first, just a streak of black. Then the wolf was there, facing away from her, its back massive and monstrous, its tail moving back and forth, tracing a pattern in the dust. It was so big that she could not see it all at once.

Cassie's breath burst out in a gasp, jagged with fear.

The wolf's ears froze, then quivered, and it turned its eyes to meet hers.

Eyes that were savage and beautiful.

Eyes that _saw _her.

Not an ordinary kind of seeing, but seeing in a way that no one had seen her before. Its eyes penetrated her, recognizing something. The terror hit her then. She crumpled to the ground, unable to look any longer, and burrowed deep into the refuge of darkness.

A great shadow loomed over her. She was so small and it was so immense that she felt the cover of the standing figure weigh down upon her as though her body were sinking into the ground. A shiver coursed through her body as it responded to the threat. She imagined the wolf tearing through her flesh with its hooked canines.

There was a roar.

Cassie waited to feel the leap, to feel the snap of its jaws and the ripping of claws, but she felt nothing. She heard a scuffling and a tinkling of Flora's bells, and it was only then that she realized the shape had lifted. From her crouch, she heard gnashing and gnarling. But there was something else, another sound that she couldn't identify.

Much later, she would learn that it was the roar of a dark rage being let loose.

Then there followed a panicked silence, a frenetic calm. Finally, she couldn't resist slowly lifting her head to look for Flora.

All was still.

Nothing was left but the broken tether still tied to the stake, lying slack on the dusty ground.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE:**

**Location:** The village/town of Chance Harbor is located near **Farnham, Surrey** and somewhere around **Eastern Sussex **in the United Kingdom. While Grandmother Jane's home is located within the **Bourne Woods**, near Farnham. Both places were used as sets for films like _The Wolfman (2010) _and _Gladiator (2000)._

**Story Pacing:** The pacing of the story will be slow for the next few chapters, to give an understanding of Cassie before she becomes a hunter. Also, Faye will appear in later chapters, as of now I'm leaving her to be an enigma.


	3. Before the Harvest

**Author's Note:** I'm sure guys all know by now that the CW has officially canceled _The Secret Circle._ But fear not my friends, if we all band together we can help our favorite witch show to make a comeback next year! On Tumblr, there's a blog called **SavetheCircle** and it's dedicated to campaigning the return of TSC! Follow it! It has a Facebook petition and a Twitter tag we should all retweet!

* * *

**Chapter Two: Before the Harvest**

* * *

**1882 – Present Day**

* * *

Cassie sat waiting at the edge of the road with her legs outstretched, the ground damp with early morning dew. She didn't worry about her feet getting run over; she never worried about things like that. She was older now—ten years had passed since the awful night when she had looked into the eyes of evil. Looked into those dark eyes without a means to protect herself.

Walking past the sacrificial altar today, though, she hadn't even noticed the pile of bones left over from the previous night's offering. Like all the other children in the village, she'd seen it once a month all her life and stopped thinking about what it meant.

Most children became obsessed with full-moon nights at some point in their lives, stopping at the altar the following mornings to examine the dried blood and asking questions: _Does the beast talk? Is it like the other wolves in_ _the forest? Why is the wretched animal so bad?_

The answers they were given were often more frustrating than none at all. Parents tried to protect the children, shushing them, telling them not to talk about it. But sometimes they let slip some information, saying, "We put a sacrifice here so that the wolf doesn't come and eat up cute little girls like you," while nipping their noses.

Ever since her encounter with the wolf, Cassie had stopped asking about it. Often at night, though, she would become overwhelmed by the memory. She would wake up and watch Lux, an easy sleeper, lying much too still in her bed. Feeling desperately alone, Cassie would gaze at her sister for a long time until the panic became too much, and she would reach up to feel Lux's heartbeat.

"Stop it!" Lux would slur sleepily, reaching up and swatting at Cassie's hand away. Cassie knew that her sister didn't like to think of her heartbeat. It reminded her that she was alive, that she was fallible, just flesh and bones.

Now Cassie ran her fingers over the chilled ground of the walkway. Feeling the grooves between the hunks of old sandstone; the stone felt like it might collapse, like it was rotting from the inside and, with just a little more time, she would be able to crumble off bits with her fingers.

The leaves of the trees were yellow, as though they had absorbed all the spring sunshine and were saving it for winter.

It was easier to shrug off last night's full moon on a day like today. The whole town was in a commotion as everyone prepared for the harvest: Men ran with rusty scythes, and women leaned out of their cottage windows, dropping loaves of bread into passing baskets.

Soon Cassie saw Lux's broad, beautiful face as her sister came up the walk on the way back from taking a broken latch to the blacksmith for repair. As Lux came up the path, some of the villagers' young daughters trailed behind her doing a strange, ritualistic walk. As they came closer, Cassie realized that Lux was teaching the four little girls how to curtsy.

Lux was soft in a way that no one else was, a softness of nature and being. Her hair was neither red nor blond; it was both. She didn't belong here in Chance Harbor; she belonged in a cottony land where the skies were marbled yellow, blue, and pink, like watercolors. She spoke in poetry, her voice sweet like a song. Cassie felt as if her family were just borrowing Lux.

_How strange it is to have a sister_, she thought. _Someone you could have been_.

Lux stopped in front of Cassie, and the train of girls stopped, too. A small one with dirt-stained knees looked at her judgmentally, disappointed in her for not being more like her older sister. The village had always thought of Cassie as the other one, the more mysterious sister, the not-Lux. Two of the girls studied a man across the road who was frantically trying to yoke his ox to his wagon.

"Hi!" Lux twirled the fourth young girl around, bending down to hold the girl's small hand above her head. The girl was hesitant to make the turn, to look away from her idol.

The other girls looked impatient, feeling as if they, too, should be included.

Cassie asked, "Have you heard anything about the campout?"

Lux leaned in. "Everyone else has permission!" she whispered. "Now we _have _to go."

"Well, now it comes down to convincing Mother."

"You try."

"Are you mad? She'll never say yes to me. You're the one who always gets whatever it is you want."

"Maybe." Lux's lips were big and pink. When she was nervous, she chewed them pinker. "Maybe you're right," she said, grinning. "In any case, I'm a step ahead of you."

With a sly smile, she held her basket out to Cassie, who guessed what was inside before she saw. Or maybe she'd smelled them. Their mother's favorite sweet cakes.

"_Such _a good idea!" Cassie stood, brushing the dirt off the back of her tunic.

Lux, pleased with her foresight, put her arm around her sister. Together, they returned the little girls to their mothers, who were working in the gardens. Women were tough in this village, and yet even the gruffest among them smiled up at the oldest Blake child.

* * *

Heading home, they passed a few pigs wheezing like sick old men, a baby goat that tried to tag along with some disdainful chickens, and a serene cow munching on hay. They passed the long row of houses, standing on their stilts as if ready to wander away, and arrived at the second one from the end. Hoisting themselves up the ladder, the girls entered the landscape of their lives. The wood dresser was so warped that the drawers refused to close. The wooden rope bed gave splinters. The washboard their father had made for their mother the winter before was worn down now—she needed another. The basket for berries was low and flat, to ensure that none got crushed.

In a shaft of light from the window, a few bits of feather stuffing hung in the air, reminding Cassie of when they jumped on the mattresses as girls and entire clouds of feathers would float around them.

There wasn't much to distinguish their home from the others. The furniture in Chance Harbor was simple and functional. Everything served a purpose. A table had four legs and a flat top, nothing more.

Their mother was home, of course. Working over the stove, she was lost in thought. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun at the top of her head, a few strands hanging free at the nape of her neck.

Before the girls came in, Amelia had been thinking of her husband, of all his faults and all his virtues. The fault that she blamed him for most of all—the fault that was not forgivable—was that he was unimaginative. She was thinking of a recent day. Feeling dreamy, feeling like giving him a chance, she'd asked hopefully: _What is outside the_ _walls, do you think? _He'd chewed his food, swallowed. Even tossed back some ale. He'd looked like he was thinking. _A whole lot more of the same, I reckon._

Amelia had felt like falling to the ground. People left her family alone. The blonde-haired woman felt cut off from things, like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.

Stirring the stew, she realized she was caught in a whirlpool—the more she struggled to get out, the more vehemently she was dragged down, down, down…

"Mother!" Lux came up behind her and gently tickled her back. Amelia returned to the world of daughters and uncooked stew.

"Are you girls thirsty?" Amelia brightened, pouring out two cups of water. She sweetened Lux's with a nip of honey, but Cassie, she knew, had no use for it.

"You two have a big day today," she said, handing the appropriate glass to each girl.

Amelia was grateful that she had the excuse of staying home to cook the men's harvest meal. She went back to stirring the stew in a huge round pot with handles on both sides. The pot had a low-seated belly that always made Lux feel strange because it was not quite a half sphere.

Lux didn't like things that seemed incomplete. Cassie peered in. In the pot was a medley of brown oats and tan and gray seeds—some green peas stood out garishly.

Lux chattered while Cassie set to work helping her mother chop the spindly strands off the carrots. Amelia was silent. It was Lux's talking filled the dead air, but Cassie wondered whether something was wrong. Waiting out her mother's mood, as she had learned to do in the past, she added some vegetables to the pot. Collards, garlic, onions, leeks, spinach, and parsley.

What she could not know was that her mother had returned to thoughts of her husband. John was a caring father, a supportive husband. But that was not all Amelia had promised herself. If expectations had been set lower, his failures might not have been so devastating.

For what he did do, for the end that he _had _held up, Amelia was grateful. For those things, she felt she had repaid him sufficiently by keeping a tidy household and by loving their children. She had to acknowledge that maybe in marriage, as in any contractual obligation, in matters of owing and being owed; there was no allowance for love.

Feeling satisfied with this conclusion, Amelia turned to her girls to find Cassie gazing at her with those penetrating bright blue eyes, almost as though she could hear her mother's thoughts. She cleared her throat.

"Good that you girls are helping out like this. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: You'll need to be able to cook, Cassie, when you start to build your own home. Lux already knows."

Lux was like Amelia. They foresaw and planned. Cassie and John were quick to think and quick to act.

"I'm _nineteen_. Let's not rush it." The youngest Blake said slicing a potato through the skin and the dull velvety meat. She let the two halves fall open and bobble on the uneven table. She didn't like to think of the things her mother always insisted on talking about.

"You are of marriageable age, Cassie. You're a young woman now."

With this concession, all thoughts of any future responsibility dissipated from the sisters' minds. They saw their moment.

"So, Mother. We're leaving for the harvest soon," Lux began.

"Yes, of course. Your first time, Cassie," Amelia said, looking down to conceal her pride. She had begun grating cabbage.

"Some people, some women, are staying on afterward…" Cassie added. "… for the little campfire thing," Lux continued.

"Diana's mother is taking some of the other girls to camp out…" said Cassie. "… and we wanted to know if we could go," Lux finished.

"With Diana's mother?" Amelia processed the one piece of concrete information she'd been given.

"Yes," said Cassie.

She seemed to accept this explanation. "The other mothers already said yes?"

"Yes," Cassie said again.

"All right. I guess that would be okay," she said absentmindedly.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" It was only then, seeing the extent of their gratitude, that Amelia realized she'd consented to something maybe she shouldn't have.

"I can't believe she said yes!" Cassie exclaimed.

"That was so good, how you kept saying yes, so she didn't have time to think about it!" The girls ambled down the rutty road to the town square.

"And you were so good, tickling her back!"

"That was good, right? I know she likes it." Lux smiled in satisfaction.

* * *

"Lux! Don't tell me you brought your whole wardrobe."

Their friend Sally Matthews peered at them from around the corner, her pale brow knit into lines of concern. Two more girls came into view behind her: Diana and Melissa.

Lux was cradling her pack in her arms, and Cassie belatedly realized that it was bulging.

"You're going to have to carry it around all day," Cassie said. Diana scowled, knowing Lux got overambitious sometimes. "We are _not _going to carry it for you if you get tired."

"Extra blankets." Lux smiled. She got cold easily.

"Planning on having company?" Melissa asked with one eyebrow arched.

Cassie thought their three friends looked like a trio of mythical goddesses. Sally's hair was rust-colored and smooth. It was so fine; it looked as though all of it could fit inside one stalk of straw. Her freckles were faint, like spots on a butterfly's wings. Between all her corsets and blouses and shawls, it was obvious to Cassie that she was shy about her body.

Melissa, on the other hand, kept the ties of her blouse loose and didn't rush to fix it if it fell a little too low. She was pretty, with a heart-shaped mouth and a sharp face—she sucked her cheeks in to make it more so. Her hair was so dark that it was black or brown or blue, depending on the light. If you put her in a finer top, Melissa could pass for a lady.

Diana was a melancholic beauty with light brown hair and a calculating manner. She was often too quick with a sharp word, but she usually apologized. She was tall and somewhat imperious.

All five girls headed out through the village gates and up the hill toward the field, falling in with the parade of men, who were excited, too. The town itself felt wide awake, the anticipation floating in the air like the smell of a strong, unexpected spice.

Soon, Nick Armstrong caught up with them, stumbling as he tried to kick a stone forward with each step.

"H-Hi." Nick's eyes were quick and a faint shade of blue. He was a bit younger than the girls, a village outcast who'd always been a little… _different_. Nick wore a single suede glove without explanation and was always shuffling a deck of homemade cards that he carried with him at all times. The pockets were forever pulled out of his patchwork pants, a mash-up of all the pieces of burlap and hide his mother had lying around. He was teased about them, but he didn't mind; he was proud of the incredible work by his mother, who stayed up late into the nights sewing, and who worked hard enough at the tavern as it was.

It was said that Nick had been dropped on his head as an infant, and that was why he was strange. Cassie thought that notion was ridiculous. He was a beautiful soul.

The trouble was that instead of rushing to get in his own words as everyone else did, he really listened. And that made people think he was slow. But he was kind and good, a lover of animals and people.

Nick and Cassie listened as the other girls chattered about the boys from neighboring villages who would be coming to help with the harvest. Nick soon lost interest and ambled back toward the center of town.

Something changed in the air, though, as the girls passed a temporary outdoor blacksmith shop that had been set up on the path to the harvest. A sense of self-awareness set in. A quickening of breath; a loss of focus. Cassie narrowed her eyes in disappointment at her friends; they were too smart for this. Losing it over a boy.

_Adam Conant._

He was lanky and dashing, with cropped hair and a relaxed smile. The girls saw him at work outside with his equally handsome father, Ethan, repairing axles for the harvest wagons. The way some people loved to cook or to work in the garden, Adam loved the intricacies of locks, the process of the planning, the designing, the making. He had shown a few he made to Cassie once, square and round, one shaped unwittingly like the head of a cat, another like an upturned house drawn by a child, or a family crest.

Some black, some gold, some gold underneath blackened tarnish. Cassie waved easily as her friends went mute, smiled shyly at their feet, and shuttled past.

Only Lux curtsied politely. Adam shook his head, grinning. Melissa hung back at the last moment to make very sure her eyes met Adam's and held his gaze long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

Other than that, the girls pretended that he hadn't affected them at all, and self-consciously continued with their conversation. Close as they all were, they felt that admitting their attraction would make themselves vulnerable. Besides, this way, each girl got to feel as if she were keeping Adam to herself. Cassie couldn't help wondering why her own reaction was so different from theirs.

True, he was good-looking, charming, tall, and kind, but he did not leave her feeling girly and giddy.

"I hope you guys haven't forgotten who's coming today,"She teased them.

"Some of them _have _to be handsome," Lux jumped in. "By the rule of ratios."

The girls looked at one another and reached for each other's hands, jumping up and down in unison. They would be free for the night.

And in Chance Harbor, a night of freedom meant everything.

* * *

Meanwhile, a lugger ship arrived at the Dover port in Kent. It was 70 feet in length, with a draft of 8 feet and a beam of 20 feet. The hull was a dark mahogany color with the sails being a bright crimson contrast. On the largest sail, the word 'Reaper' was printed in white. There was a lot of commotion as the passengers were let off. Walking down the ramp the port dock was filled with people, bustling and hustling.

A young woman, looking to be the age of either nineteen or twenty walked down the dock and onto the cobblestone street. She wore a black corset, an ankle-length chemise-like skirt and long red robe, it's hood casting a shadow over the top half of her face. Beside her a tall man wore a black tight-fitting frock coat, waistcoat and dark colored trousers.

They soon arrived at a horse stable, hearing the animals cry for food on the far side of the building. He paid the stable manager, a short man with withering hair, who gave them their horses. He paid the old man 4 pounds and then they were off on their way through the Bourne Woods.

The pair of black horses kicked up a storm of pocketed dust beneath their hooves as they galloped along the broken dirt and grim covered stone road. The howling wind whistled past them, the young woman's red hood falling off, a head full of dark brown hair billowing in the wind. The man steered his horse up a hill and the woman followed. Bringing the animals to a halt, they stood on the hill overlooking the town below.

"We're here, _ma fille_." The man said as petted his horse's mane. "It has been a long time." _(English Translation: "my daughter".)_

"Yes, _père_. it has."_(English Translation: "father".)_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR CHAPTER TWO:**

**Location:** The **Dover port** is located in **Kent**, which is next to **East Sussex**.

**Translation: **The words that are being translated into English are **French**.

**Time Period Change:** I've changed the time period from the **English Renaissance **to the **Victorian Era**. I will still try to keep everything correct to the timeline, I changed it to the Victorian Era, because I figured it would make things a lot easier.


	4. Silent Glances

**Chapter Three: Silent Glances**

* * *

It was still so early that the morning light cast a hushed pink glow on the hay fields, and they looked almost too beautiful to be touched. Cassie and her friends watched as the first men out from the village hovered, not speaking. The men felt foolish, but no one wanted to be the first to hack into the even sheet of hay. Work was work, though, and so they set to it.

The men were just laying the first blows when they heard the rumbling of wheels. A wedding in the village a week earlier had made a big impression on Cassie's friends. Now the girls couldn't help but wonder whether the foreign wagons' cargo would change their lives. But the older men of the village, already hard at work, held a sad knowledge: No matter how good the boys were, they would never be able to live up to the girls' expectations.

The wagon lurched to a stop; the horse pulling it was so inky black that it looked like a silhouette against the light wheat background. As the guest laborers from other villages began to pour out, the girls rose from the haystacks where they sat, shaking out their skirts in preparation. The boys were energetic, young, and strong, and Cassie was happy for her friends, who were light-headed with excitement. Somehow, though, she knew there wouldn't be anyone for her—not among these village boys. They just lacked… _something_.

The men, stepping out, shaded their eyes against the sun. They carried blankets rolled into packs and jackets slung loose over their shoulders. The younger ones' eyes scanned the girls.

They knew this dance well.

An especially eager harvester stopped in front of a stunned Sally, who held her breath, afraid to disrupt the air around her.

"Hi," he said, flashing all his teeth, trying hard. He didn't see Diana pinch Sally's thigh.

"Hello," Diana said for her.

Lux looked down, demure, while Melissa scooted her breasts higher up into the corset of her blouse. Diana's eyes flickered, darting from one boy to the next, weighing their cons (this one had the gangliest limbs) against their pros (but also the nicest leather bag). The choosing seemed a matter of utmost importance.

As soon as they had gone, the girls ran toward one another into a huddle, narrowly avoiding collision.

"So many!" Sally cried, blowing at a stray wisp of hair.

"Just the right amount." Diana caught her breath, having singled out the good ones.

"One for each, with a few left over for me." Melissa sashayed in her skirt.

"Cassie, are you sure you have the tea?" Lux interrupted, putting a momentary halt to the excitement.

"Yes."

Lux gave her a look, knowing her sister's forgetfulness.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure," Cassie said, patting her pack.

They resumed staking their claims without even considering that the boys might like to have a say in the matter. Diana felt she deserved the harvester who'd come up to Sally, as she'd been the one to actually speak to him. Cassie thought it was a bit grabby, but Sally didn't argue, as she had her eye on a quieter, less forward one anyway.

Lux pointed to a passing harvester, portly in his breeches. "There goes your husband now, Melissa!"

"At least I don't have a crush on a sheep shearer who could be my grandfather." Melissa's angular face made her seem angry, even when she wasn't.

Sally felt compelled to mention the person missing at the scene. "Oh, who cares?" she said, smoothing a lock of her red hair. "Adam is better looking than all of them."

"You know he's not going to marry any of us village girls," Diana snapped, as she sometimes did. "We're all too poor."

The girls saw Diana's father Charles, the village authority and harvest overseer, coming toward them, so they trudged out to the fields and set to work, swaying on their slender legs as they raked the grass into rows for drying. Cassie wished she didn't feel so divorced from her friends' excitement—it must have been wonderful to feel dizzy with joy, as they did. Try as she might, love had never been a topic that had much interested her.

Now Cassie felt the dejection one experienced after a holiday had come and gone.

Seeing the blonde's disinterest, Diana was pleased.

_More for me to choose from_, she thought, surveying the men in the fields. Just then, her eye caught a black horse coming in, so unexpected that she didn't even have a chance to meet her friends' eyes before its hooves galloped to a stop. They saw, too, though. Lux lifted her head but pretended to work, picking up and setting down the same small heap repeatedly.

Melissa blotted her face with the inside of her skirt, and Sally swiped at the hair clinging to her forehead, already sticky with sweat from the muggy air.

The horse slowed to a stop, the cart's wheels lurching forward one last time and then rocking back into a rut.

Cassie watched as a few older men toddled out of the wagon, but then went back to work with her wide-toothed rake as the rest of the harvesters drifted out. She could sense her friends scrutinizing the new arrivals.

She wasn't sure what made her look up again—years later, remembering this morning as the one that forever altered the course of her life, she always said that she'd felt something out of the corner of her eye, compelling her to look, almost as if someone had tapped her on the shoulder to make her turn.

Looking up, she saw a beautifully heart-stopping, dark-haired young woman. She looked wild and haunted, wearing all black, like a horse that could not be tamed. Her impressively long red hood giving her an air of royalty; her eyes were different, though. There was something in them, she couldn't place, something drawing her…

Cassie felt the air empty out of her.

_Faye and Cassie had spent the day chasing each other_ _around the fields, collecting huge white mushrooms,_ _who's layered, dusty, charcoal bottoms were soft and_ _crumbling. They'd collapsed upon reaching the square and_ _begun playing a game of riddles, charades, something she_ _was never good at. She became hopelessly lost, never able_ _to keep track of whether we were on the third syllable or_ _the second of the third word or the fifth, and, wait a_ _moment, how many words were there in all?_

_But Faye's father appeared from out of nowhere and_ _yanked her up, saying, "We need to leave. Now."_

_Shouts echoed behind him: "Con man! Scoundrel!_ _Thief!"_

_Faye had looked back over her shoulder as her father_ _dragged her away by a hand. Villagers gathered in a_ _mob, waving weapons. An angry farmhand chased after_ _them with a lit torch outstretched: "That's right, get out of_ _here! And never come back."_

They'd left town immediately, and it was the last Cassie had seen of Faye. From the looks on the villagers' faces that day, she'd assumed she was dead.

But now…

_I must be crazy_, she thought. It had been twelve years. She had given up; she had stopped searching for her arrows.

She couldn't be the same person… _could she_?

Also seeing the girl, her friends eyed each other worriedly. She looked like no one else, like the purple glow at the base of a flame, the most beautiful and the most dangerous. She kept her head down as she made her way through the fields, her eyes locked on the ground. She avoided meeting the eyes of the villagers; clearly she answered to no one.

Seeing Cassie's transfixed gaze, Lux tossed some hay into the air in front of her. But she did not awake.

Cassie edged closer to the figure. _Is it her? _But the Diana swooped in, pushing through a hefty patch of reeds, and reminded her to stay in her line. Cassie wondered fleetingly whether the brunette suspected something, whether she had noticed the way she reacted, the way her skin had flushed and her eyes had softened, and were separating them purposefully. She felt ashamed but regained her common sense. She would have no reason to. She was only curious, nostalgic for her childhood friend, for the fun they had once had together.

She was just a girl she'd played with, now older. _Right?_

Charles continued, barking an unbroken string of orders that, with time, came to sound like a narrative. She watched as the person who might be Faye set down her bag, a worn piece of cloth, the opening drawn together with a piece of fraying string. She began to swing her massive scythe, brandishing it expertly across the grass. She glued her chin to her chest, burying her face in work.

Cassie tried to watch her, but the largest of the harvesters came between them, shirtless, his upper arms dimpled like cauliflower. When the monolithic harvester wasn't in the way, the harvest overseer was weaving between the rows.

Cassie could only see the object of her attention in flashes. A hand gripping the handle of the rake… a smooth olive calf… the set of a jawbone. She was lashing with a rhythmic motion. Pounding. Sweating. Muscles working.

Finally, she caught a good angle. It _was _Faye. She was sure of it. Her heart clapped against her chest, even now, so many years later. Back then, it had been an innocent infatuation, something between children, but now…she felt something else.

The blonde thought back to when she and Faye used to lie on their stomachs, nestled into the sprawling roots of the great pine tree. Then they'd climb to the top to see all the other towns they would leave their village to visit one day.

Only Faye had actually gotten out.

Now Cassie longed to be near her, to know her again, to know whether she was still the same. She was lost in these thoughts, and her eyes were resting on her when she looked up. The brunette's gaze met hers through the hay-flecked air.

She paused in the flow of her work, her hazel eyes still and opaque. Then she looked away.

Did she not know her?

Had she forgotten?

Or perhaps she belonged to someone else….

Cassie's rake stilled in the air, suspended. Should she go to her? But, then, as though nothing had happened—_swoosh,_ _swoosh, swoosh—_swinging her scythe hard and fast, Faye was back to work. She did not look up again.

* * *

"Cassie."

Kneeling on the ground, tying up a sheaf of the honey-tinted hay, she heard a voice above her. _She_ _remembers. _She was still, frozen, unable to look up.

"Cassie?"

She slowly raised her head—only to see Adam Conant holding out a battered jug of water.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"I thought maybe you'd gone deaf from working too hard." His dark brows were lifted into curves with the question.

"Oh. No," she stumbled, shaken.

She ignored the water and reached for the thick copper mallet he was holding in his other hand and lifted it to her cheek. The metal was deliciously cool.

She looked around, the movement of the harvest softened in the golden haze of dust. She tried to angle past Adam for a better view. The trouble was, though, that Adam followed, blocking Faye from sight.

Cassie felt her heat rush into the mallet, and soon it was no good anymore. As she handed it back, Adam squinted at her and laughed. Cassie put a hand to her cheek—it came away black. There was a round, soot-stained circle on each of her cheeks.

"You're like a tough-girl china doll."

In spite of herself, she liked how that sounded. She declined his handkerchief and wiped her face on her sleeve. She knew the water was only an excuse for Adam to be out in the fields, to be included in the day. He got left out of a lot of things because of his family's stature in the town; it was hard for him, she knew, to be in a class by himself. She looked down at his new leather boots, though, which were so shiny that they reflected, and she lost whatever sympathy she'd had for him. To buy boots like those when the people around him didn't have enough to eat seemed unfeeling.

"I know they're stupid," he said with a quiet smile.

Cassie realized she hadn't been subtle. "Embarrassing. But they're a gift from my grandmother."

_Still not okay_, she thought, feeling belligerent. She tried to see if Faye had noticed her talking with Adam. But she seemed to have no interest; Cassie could tell the red hooded woman had not looked once.

Adam muttered that he needed to offer water to others. All the surrounding young women, who had neglected their work to watch the privileged boy, quickly got back to binding the cut hay at their feet. As he continued down the line, though, Cassie could feel his eyes lingering on her, longer than they should have. Adam knew Cassie was in one of her contrarian moods. She wanted to be alone. As he moved away, though, he couldn't help watching her.

Rumors had circulated, rumors that she had seen the wolf as a child, that it had changed her, and that she'd never been the same. When anyone asked, she wouldn't tell. But it was a small town, and there were no secrets.

He'd always known she was different, but he'd always felt a little different himself. Adam thought maybe they could be different together.

* * *

The midday sun blazed down from the center of the sky. It had baked the fields so that they smelled burned. Sheltered from the cruel heat, the workers nursed their lunches under a grove of trees at the edge of the fields—as always, the men in one group, the women together in another.

"Just look at me!" Melissa twirled, the hayseed dropping like confetti around her. "I feel like a cow."

"You're covered in the stuff." Sally frowned, pulling pieces of hay from her hair.

"Quit twirling like an idiot," hissed Diana. "Don't you want the boys to think you're a grown-up?"

As she watched Faye join the women circling the barrels of water, Cassie tuned out her girlfriends' voices, which sounded to her like the noise of cackling hens. She took a long time wiping her hands on her skirt, careful to keep a distance from her. In line for a drink, Faye was bent over, examining something in her bag. The brunette glanced up and caught her eye again.

It froze her. Should she say something? She waited dumbly, watching the way her eyes flickered. Was it with recognition?

The harvesters in line behind the estranged woman nudged her. She swung her bag over her shoulder and pushed her way past the rest of the hungry women, forgetting her food.

One of the girls tugged on Cassie's skirt, and she reluctantly sank to the grass, watching her friend go.

* * *

At the river's edge, a few villagers were swinging from a rope tied to an overhanging branch, daring one another into the cold water.

"Adam, go!" one of them called out.

Adam hurled his body off the edge of the embankment, holding tight to the rope and letting go at the highest point of the upward arc. Plunging into the water, he swam a few strokes and then emerged, teeth chattering. A dog ran up, barking its objection. Adam called to it. When it refused to come, Adam, feeling stiffened by the cold, rigidly tossed it a stick. The dog was distracted, though, by its owner bending to scoop up a drink of water. One of the visiting harvesters.

More appeared lazily at his side—men exhausted by the day's hard labor, stooping, shuffling. But there was one person he saw on the far side of the field standing tall and dark in their midst. He recognized her instantly. It was Faye Chamberlain.

His heart pumped. Needing to think, he pulled in a huge breath and sank beneath the surface, making the world disappear. He opened his eyes to the calm of the green beneath. The current was not fast where he was, and he let himself hang, suspended by the water's buoyancy.

He would stay there forever, in a peaceful world where there were no dead mothers. And no mother killers. _This is_ _where I will stay_, Adam's submerged mind decided.

But his lungs decided differently, at first nagging, then demanding, and finally threatening to explode.

His head burst through the surface. His eyes blinked away the water. He looked to the field—and blinked again to be sure.

The laborers were gone.

And so was Faye.

Some of the other boys had quieted, looking nervously at Adam. It was silent, except for a fluttering bird in the nearby pines. His father seemed especially concerned.

Ethan watched his son from the shore, but Adam refused to meet his gaze. Instead, he swam away furiously, in perfect form, his muscles burning, feeling as though they were going to tear open. The lesser shock of the cold was a comfort after the shock of seeing the brunette haired mother killer.

He tried to swim away the horrible memory of the day Faye left town. Even if he swam to the end of the world, though, it wouldn't be far enough to leave behind the image of his father, a tough man, tall and strong, bawling wet tears over his mother lying in the road.

* * *

Seeing Adam Conant staring at her in horror had sickened Faye. Just like it had on that day so many years ago. She had to walk away before Adam emerged again from the water. She found an excuse—he told the harvest overseer that her father would be expecting her to come home early.

Why had she returned to the village? For so many years, Faye had avoided Chance Harbor, the site of the awful accident.

She hammered at a stake, driving it mercilessly into the earth, a rhythm to which she could sort her thoughts. There was something about Chance Harbor that had always called to her, he reminded herself. But she was afraid of being there.

With _her_. Her memories loved her too much. They had been just kids. Better to keep her as she'd been, hold her safe like a polished stone.

Coming in on horseback, Faye had found her way as if she were in a dream, pulled forward by an irresistible force to the town she had once known so well. How strange that everything in sight, every tree, every slight bend in the road, would remind her of the same blonde haired girl, the one with the bright blue eyes. And here she was, still.

Beautiful. A beauty so potent that it almost hurt. But it prompted memories of a past she had tried to forget.

The horn sounded from the fields, signaling the end of lunch, signaling the end of memory. It was time to go back to work. But, Faye never returned, instead she hopped onto her black stallion and left to find her father. Looking up, the sky was tinged with a mixture of orange, pink and darker shades of blue. Nightfall was in couple of hours, and the town would be empty.

Suddenly an annoying burning sensation formed within Faye's left shoulder. Signifying that there was a full moon coming, and soon.

_I must find__ those crystals, so I can leave this town for good!_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE:**

**Story Pacing: **The story will picking up in the next few chapters. Plus, more insight in Faye's mind and what her agendas are in her returning to Chance Harbor with her father. Thomas will be coming back in the next chapter!


	5. The Blood Moon

**Chapter Four: The Blood ****Moon**

* * *

Down by the river, a harvester was pulling fistfuls of feathers off a limp chicken, flicking them carelessly to the ground. Villagers were roasting another bird over a fire, rotating the long skewer. The ruddy smell of the freshly cut hay, rolled up into unruly bales, had awakened the villagers' animal instincts. They felt lustful in their exhaustion.

Cassie watched the men set out enormous kegs that, when empty, could be used for rides down the hill. Kegs like ones that Cassie and Faye themselves had spent some time in once, hiding from adults. The outer world had been reduced to a dull roar from the woody confines where they crouched, giggling.

Her memories of her time with Faye were smooth and compact, like eggs she could hold.

"_How could I forget?" _The new memory sliced through the old one.

Someone was playing a flute now, a haunting melody.

Her father ate to the music, theatrically chomping down with every trill. "Helps the digestion," John said, motioning with his head to the flautist. It was the first time she'd seen him all day.

Cassie bit into the biggest chicken leg, her second. Diana enviously measured Cassie's tiny waist with her two hands, her fingers touching. "It's not fair," she said.

Sally pulled the girls aside and led them down to the riverside to reveal an old rowboat that had been hidden in the shoreline brush that afternoon. It was faded gray from the sun, stained with bird droppings and traces of muddy water, the disappointing brown of coffee stains.

"This'll do," Cassie said with an approving nod.

Walking back from the river, the blonde saw that Faye's father, Thomas, had returned and that Charles Meade had stopped in front of him. She knew that they didn't like each other from past conversation she had overheard. As a matter of fact, Thomas didn't like any of the adults in the village, save for Amelia and Jane Blake.

"We're clearing pines tomorrow and could use a man like you."

"You're a good worker," John added, unbidden.

Cassie was surprised her father had spoken, but pleased nonetheless. Thomas listened, looking doubtful.

"We'll provide you with an axe," Charles said. His cheeks were thick and roughened.

Thomas whipped his own axe out from a back pocket, spinning it. "I've got my own. I want double, to chop trees."

Charles raised an eyebrow but reluctantly agreed to the price. The man _was _a good worker. He had cleared more hay than anyone else, ever.

"Okay." He turned. "Men on the big rocks other side of the river! The women will stay on this side." As per tradition, the men and the women would set up camp separately.

Despite the usual setup, Diana's mother was concerned. It was the first year her daughter was there, and it was said that, long ago, someone had been killed there by the wolf. Some said it had been a child; some said it had been three little girls who had wandered away during a swim. Others said it had been a woman who had run off after being caught with a lover.

As with so much of the wolf lore, no one knew for sure exactly what had happened or to whom. Everyone knew only that something had happened to someone.

"I hope we'll be safe out here. Maybe my husband could stay." She always looked like she was about to sneeze or cry.

"Mother," Diana said sternly, "It's nothing to worry about. The wolf took a lamb last night from the altar. We're safe for another month."

"Women only," another woman said brusquely. "You'll be just fine."

"Okay then, girls." Diana's mother pulled the girls close to give them private instruction. "Be sure to sleep with your shoes under your pillows. Don't want them getting stolen in the night."

The girls nodded in false solemnity. They were used to her eccentricities.

"But, wait, he hasn't sung yet. You'll want to hear it," one harvester called out, motioning to a squat man with a nose that sat on his face like a cucumber.

"Sing us a song, then. Get on with it," Charles ordered.

"I couldn't," said the squat harvester, falsely modest.

"Yes, you could."

"Oh, well, sure. I guess I could."

His song was winding and beautiful, a ballad. The villagers leaned back and let themselves be consumed by the sound, a sound that skimmed the river, that wrapped the woods, that brought everything together at once. Cassie closed her eyes but opened them again when she felt someone close to her. It was Faye. She had come very near, her breath warming her ear. "Find me later."

She boldly turned to look him in the face. "How?" Up close, she was jarringly beautiful. Her thick, dark hair fell over one eye.

"Watch for my light."

All she could do was nod, stunned by her own physical reaction. She managed to collect herself, but she'd already gone. After the men set off in boats to their campsite across the river, the girls gathered inside the tent they were sharing with Diana's mother. Seated in a circle, weaving wreaths to serve as weights on top of the haystacks, they waited for sleep to overtake their fidgety chaperone. They had set up on smooth land and were circled around a large lantern, which had a design cut into it: Dots and squiggle radiated from the center, casting a world of shapes onto the ground and the tent's billowy canvas walls.

"The tea," Diana whispered, holding out her open palm. Her mother was showing no sign of sleepiness. On the one night that they needed her to go to sleep, she was alert with worry, and Diana wanted to make sure she didn't wake with every shifting of the fire logs. Cassie dug out a pouch of her grandmother's sleep-inducing sage tea from the depths of her satchel.

Diana stepped outside the tent to prepare the sleeping brew, her eyes glinting as she bent over the fire's dying coals. She ducked back in and handed each girl a mug of plain tea, saving grandmother's special brew for the last cup, which she handed to her mother.

They waited for her to drink it, trying not to look over-interested.

"Thank you." Diana's mother raised it to her lips, and then set it down.

"Too hot," she said, wincing. The girls looked at one another. But soon, in her quick, nervous way, she picked it up again.

As she sipped her tea, the girls chatted about nothing, anything. The brew didn't seem to be having any effect. Within a few more moments, though, the girls looked down and she had curled up in her blankets.

"Now, girls, get to bed." That was all she managed to get out, propped up on her elbows, before feeling herself become weighty. Soon she'd fallen asleep and lay snoring on the ground. The girls pulled aside the tent flap, a window onto the pitch-dark men's camp across the river, anxious to see what the night would hold. Melissa coughed loudly, a test. Her mother did not stir. Now they could talk openly.

Melissa couldn't contain her excitement. "Cassie, I saw _Adam _looking at you today."

"I don't know what to do," Cassie spilled out. "I think he was, too. I mean, he's nice. But that's… it."

"_Nice? _Cassie, he's _rich_!"

"I would kill to be in your position," Diana said convincingly. "You shouldn't throw such an opportunity away."

"I just don't know," the blonde mused, thinking of the way she'd felt seeing Faye. "What is love supposed to feel like?"

"If you don't know what it feels like, then obviously you're not in it," Lux snapped uncharacteristically. Cassie felt hurt. She did know, though, that while Lux made other people fall in love with her instantly, there was something that prevented her from being the girl whom every _boy_ loved. She knew it was a sensitive subject, and so, impressed with her own tact, she kept quiet.

"Can you believe Faye's back?" Sally asked, quickly changing the subject as she combed through her flame-colored hair with her fingers to dislodge any remaining straw.

"No," Cassie said, glad for the shift in topics, until she realized she couldn't be outspoken about this one, either. She shook her head to herself. "No, I really can't."

"She is so unbelievably gorgeous."

"I think she looks like a villain!" Lux held an imaginary scythe and imitated his stalking gait, sending the girls into a fit. She closed her eyes when she laughed, something her Cassie had always liked about her sister.

Diana, though, remained serious. "Do you think she's killed people?"

"Like who?" Sally wondered.

"I don't know like men, women, even children."

Melissa looked uncomfortable.

"What _I _can't believe is that you used to be his best friend," the loud brunette said to Cassie.

"They used to do everything together," Lux said, a bit grudgingly. Cassie was surprised. Lux did not seem like herself.

"Before she became a murderer," Diana delighted in saying.

The girls considered this. Cassie had always been afraid to know the precise details of what had happened. It had been an accident. When Faye and her criminal father escaped town, their horse had reared up in fear, frightened by the mob and their torches—and Adam's mother had been struck. Cassie knew only vaguely of the incident, having been too young to be told at the time and the subject being unspoken of afterward—forbidden.

Chance Harbor was like that. Traumas came and went. They had to be gotten over, and that was to be the end of it. But she did know that Adam had never gotten over it.

"Wait," Diana said. "I have something." She reached into her pack and pulled out a few jars. She had stolen some of the oak bark beer her father brewed in a large vat at the back of his herding shed.

"I figured he wouldn't notice a few jarfuls missing," she said. The girls took turns downing small swigs of the burning liquid, but Melissa was the most enthusiastic.

"I've heard it can blind you." Lux scowled before reaching for a bottle.

Cassie tried it and spat it out. "Tastes like rotten porridge."

Diana looked at her, offended. She didn't like it, either, but she felt somehow that Cassie's proclamation reflected badly on her father. "Fine, more for us, then," she snapped.

"Sally?" Melissa offered the jar, teasing, already knowing the answer.

"I've heard that, too, about the blinding." She looked cornered. "Otherwise, I would," she added quickly.

"Suit yourself." Diana shrugged. Emboldened with drink, she blurted out what she'd obviously been dying to share.

"Adam may have been looking at you, Cassie, but it was _my _shoulder he touched as he passed by in church this week."

"Touched how?" asked Sally.

"Very gently and sweetly." Diana demonstrated on the sapphire-eyed blonde. In one of her rare moments of girlish earnestness, she asked, "Do you think that's flirting?"

"I do!" Melissa was optimistic while Lux flushed pink. She'd always been uncomfortable talking about boys.

"You're going to have to face them sometime, Lux," Sally chided her. "Come on, you must think _someone's_ handsome…."

Lux beamed, and tears formed in her eyes from both laughter and embarrassment. Smiling, she leaned over and muffled her face in her sister's lap.

The girls' conversation lulled as the night darkened to utter black. Together, they were comfortable without conversation, listening only to the elements of the outdoors.

Cassie gazed down at Lux, who had fallen asleep in her lap, her hands clasped together under her cheek. Funny that sometimes it felt like _she _was the older sister.

"Do you ever wonder," Sally inquired, leaning into the circle, "what Adam looks like…"

"What he looks like?" Melissa wrinkled her freckled snub nose, confused.

"Without his clothes on?" Sally blurted out.

"Eww! No! Do you?"

Sally smiled devilishly and tossed her hair. "I guess I do, if I'm asking." The scene Melissa envisioned included, of course, a crackling fire, draped animal furs, and copious goblets of wine.

"I saw my father's once," Diana cut in. The girls squealed together, both thrilled and disgusted, then quickly quieted. Tea or no tea, they might wake Diana's mother.

Lux, cradled still in Cassie's lap, woke to their screams just as Cassie saw Faye's signal, a candle flickering dimly, on the other side of the river.

"Let's go!"

Lux looked up at her foggily. "What's the rush?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. She knew her sister well. Too well.

"Because…" The younger blonde thought quickly. "We're wasting time. We need to cross the river now, before the tea wears off."

The girls looked at one another and then at the cool river lapping insistently at the shore. She was right.

It was time.

* * *

As the rowboat slipped downstream, the paddling girls never suspected that Cassie was steering them in the direction of Faye's candlelight signal. The light had disappeared, but she had kept her eye on where it had flickered and knew just the spot in the darkness they should head to.

Sally leaned nervously over the side of the boat, eyeing her fractured reflection in the passing water. She felt the river looked like inky blood, but she tried to convince herself that it was closer to blackberry juice.

Melissa seized her opportunity. Hands on either side, she rocked the boat, sending Sally lurching back onto her seat, crying out.

Diana laughed in a mean way, a savage playfulness lighting up her eyes.

Sally glared and splashed some water at her. The girls could see three different campfires buried between the trees up from shore and began rowing competently toward them. These were girls who knew how to do things other girls didn't. They pulled at the oars, and the boat glided across the river like a solitary bird.

They considered briefly the possibility of getting caught but were able to put it out of their minds easily. They were young and free—and the risk seemed worth taking.

Seeing Faye's flashing light again, Cassie hooked the boat left. As it veered, Lux lost her oar. Stretching out to recover it, she shifted her weight too quickly, causing the river to rush over the lip and into the boat. The girls screamed as water came gushing in.

Immediately they knew they had probably blown their cover.

"Jump out and flip the boat over! Hide underneath!" Cassie tried to shout and whisper at the same time.

The girls took in great surges of breaths and plunged into the water, pulling the boat upside down as they went.

Reaching for each other underwater, they made their way under the boat. They rose up, skirts trailing behind them like shrouds, to meet in the air pocketed underneath.

No one was happy. Their hair was dripping wet and their dresses soaked through, after all they'd done to be pretty for the boys.

They were here now, in the dirty blue underworld of a rotting rowboat, kicking their legs furiously and yet utterly invisible to anyone watching, even to each other. All at once, it struck them as riotously funny, and together they convulsed with laughter, trying to hold it in. Then they buckled, letting their laughter spill out into the night in a few shrieks, but trying, too, to keep quiet. It sounded like they were inside a seashell.

Cassie was starting to enjoy her role as leader.

"We do need to deal with this," she said, stating the obvious. "And quietly," she shushed them. They strained to hear if there was any movement at the shore.

Sally nodded seriously to herself, as though Cassie had said something insightful. Diana, on the other hand, rolled her eyes, exasperated at the blonde's new found tyranny.

After a moment of hearing nothing but the water swishing against the boat, she decided they were still safe.

"Okay, here we go. One, two, three—lift!" The blonde said in a voice that was more commanding than it needed to be.

The rowboat landed with one great *_plop_*, right side up. The girls waded through the shallow water onto shore, helping the boat along and feeling silly, the weight of their waterlogged skirts making their every step more slow and humiliating.

"Up here," came a loud whisper. Peering into the dark, the girls couldn't see who had spoken. They looked at one another, each privately trying to discern whether it could have been her own self-appointed boyfriend, before fastening the boat to a tree.

Cassie looked for Faye as they waddled up the riverbank. The fires danced up into the sky, and they moved to the one closest to them, feeling grubby, dirty around the edges. Lux raced up first but veered away, whispering, "It's Melissa's dad!"

"Hello? Who's down there?" came a voice from the circle of men crouched around the fire.

"Excuse us," Lux said, putting on the voice of an old woman. The five girls tried to look huddled and shrunken, desperately repressing giggles.

As they neared its light, Cassie saw through the swirling sparks rising from the campsite that Faye was not among the harvesters. The harvesters who _were _there were happy to see the girls approaching but also seemed surprised.

"You girls came all the way over here?"

"Yeah!"

"How come?"

The girls looked at one another. _Didn't they know?_

"Um…"

Lux jumped in. Always knowing what to say. "Sorry. We always come over to this side when we camp out." It was a lie. They'd never camped out before.

The boys looked at one another.

"We're not complaining."

The girls shrugged. The boys were not smart, but they were fun. They laughed when they saw how wet and bedraggled the girls were, but didn't laugh hard enough to embarrass them. They were gentlemen, even, trying very hard to keep their eyes from straying to Sally's blouse, which had drooped even lower with the wetness, showing off her full figure. She was blind to the situation.

As everyone dried off by the fire, Lux set to work weaving crowns out of grass and clover; working deftly with her prune-like fingers.

"No flowers here," she quietly lamented to no one in particular. "These will have to do." She brightened as her work got under way.

Before long, one of the harvesters, Melissa's or Diana's, depending on which girl was asked, pulled out a fiddle. He wasn't a good player, but that didn't matter much. As the girls listened, the fire crackled, throwing up ashy bits that flew into their eyes.

Melissa danced barefoot beside him, her skirt flouncing as she tried to rally the other girls to her side and her dark hair shining as it dried by the heat of the fire. Diana and Sally held each other's hands and did a halfhearted circle step. It would have been easier, Melissa thought if they'd joined her in having more of the ale. Lux came up and fitted the rings of clover onto each of their heads. She returned to her seat with one crown, displeased with the way she'd closed the loop.

"Was that you with the blinking light?" Sally asked the fiddler in a low voice that let him know he could confide in her. But he didn't know what she was talking about.

"Blinking light? Where?" He looked around, not wanting to have missed something.

Sally pouted. _Guess not._

The group was too preoccupied to notice Cassie slip out of the firelight and into the darkness.

Feeling her way blindly through the dark field, her hands brushed the stalks of grass, dry and scratchy at the tips.

When she ran her fingers along a blade the right way, from the bottom up, it felt smooth, but if she accidentally grazed a finger the other way, the blade struck back cruelly, like a thousand tiny knives.

She waited, scanning the void for Faye, but she saw nothing, heard nothing. She'd never minded being alone—often she preferred it, sought it out—but forlornly waiting for another person made her feel foolish and pathetic.

Suddenly she hated herself and hated Faye. She started back toward the campfire, telling herself she'd never put herself in a position to feel so stupid again. It was then, as she trudged angrily through the reeds, that she saw the flickering glow of a candle in the forest. She took in a sharp breath, and her resolve vanished before her heart could pass another beat.

She stepped into the tangled dark of the forest, and it broke into motion. A few birds and insects were calling out in their separate registers, layering their songs, creating strange parallels and dissonances. She could smell the faint sweet odor of the woods at night, could hear the crinkling of dried leaves underfoot.

The candle, though, had disappeared.

"Faye?" Cassie called out in a whisper.

She stepped cautiously, wondering if she had only imagined her light, and if she really was as pathetic as she'd felt just moments ago. But what was that on the ground? A marking? In the shape of… an arrow?

As she bent wearily down to rule out the possibility, just as she'd done so many countless times before, she felt a weighty, wet nudge at her back. A faint puff of air. Her breath snagged.

"Get on," she heard as she turned. It was the damp, velvet nose of a horse. Faye was outlined against the night above her, loosely holding the reins.

A hand reached down for her, and she took it. It was smooth and soft and warm. It gripped hers strongly, and without even thinking about it, Cassie let herself be lifted up, and she slid onto the horse, her body fitting into Faye's. She tentatively reached her arms around her waist and then tightened them when the horse moved. It was slow and careful as it stepped through the glade, Cassie's body dipping forward with Faye's as he moved to avoid low hanging branches. They didn't speak.

The blonde found that she didn't need to know who this new Faye was, that it was all right that she didn't, that in fact it was better not to. And then Faye found what she'd been looking for—a path that cut through the forest. She held tight to her as the brunette put their mount into a canter, and they rode, fast and free, through the woods. Her body close to hers, Cassie recalled the electric thrill of being with him when they were young, running through the forest so fast that the air whistled in their ears. That feeling was still there, but it meant so much more now.

The horse picked up speed, the fast pounding of the hooves replacing the beat of her heart. The wind streaked through her hair, and she and Faye and the animal were so close and so powerful that it felt like they would just keep going forever together, flying.

But eventually, Faye turned the horse to circle back.

Letting the horse walk, listening to its heavy breathing, they still hadn't broken the heavy silence. A sudden burning pain, coursed through Faye's right arm, starting from her fingertips until it reached her shoulder blade. Luckily, Cassie wasn't able to see the brunette's face. More importantly the shifting color of her eyes.

"Cassie, my père needs me right now." She said quickly, thankful that her red hood was long enough to cover her eyes.

"Don't go anywhere," she said, letting her off.

While she watched her dim outline ride off into the woods, Cassie's chest felt squeezed, like there was too much inside, like something was trying to sprout roots and grow there.

Maybe that was what love felt like.

She tried to recall Faye's body, to feel her in her absence. She had smelled like tarnish and leather, this dangerous girl. She awaited her return, wondering what would come next.

Cassie heard a loud crackling of branches and looked around. Seeing nothing, she looked skyward, to the tangle of branches overhead. There were pockets of night visible between them, and she could see clouds becoming insubstantial in the sky and drifting into nothingness. Two clouds remained, though, and they drifted apart to frame the moon.

It took the sapphire-eyed girl a moment to realize that the moon was full.

And red.

Her mind was bleary with confusion. The full moon had taken place the night before, so how…? Cassie's blood ran cold as understanding hit her. It was something the elders talked about, but not with much confidence. They quieted down whenever a question was asked, grumbling, as no one knew the answers with any certainty. They just knew it was not a good sign, like a black cat or a broken mirror.

_Blood moon._

There was an unearthly growl in the distance.

Cassie sprang into motion, rushing out of the forest and down to the river's edge, which had been thrown into its own chaos, the swarm of people zigzagging to safety like bumblebees.

Everyone had scattered and was piling into boats, rowing toward the village. She saw Melissa and Sally rushing toward a boat just off the shore, sloshing through the water in a panic. A few harvesters had already climbed in—there was not much room left. She hurried down to them, splashing into the water up to her waist.

"Girls, wait!"

"Get in!" Melissa pulled at Cassie's hand, ushering her aboard.

"Wait! Where's Lux?"

"She and Diana went in the first boat," Melissa replied, motioning urgently to a vessel already halfway across.

"Get in or don't!" one of the harvesters demanded as they pushed off. All niceties had vanished with the threat.

Once on the water, Cassie looked back to the shore, which was fading into darkness as the harvesters rowed furiously away. There was another boat waiting there and not nearly enough people to fill it. _Faye will find a place on it_, Cassie assured herself, an anxious sensation fermenting in her chest.

* * *

Faye harshly kicked her ankles into her horse's hide, forcing the animal to gallop faster into the forest. The wind whistled past her like a round bullet, her hood falling off revealing pair of mix-matched eyes. One was a bright hazel, while the other was a faint crimson. Matching the ominous moon above the clouds, hanging menacingly overhead.

When she arrived at her house, lost in a secluded part of the forest, deep within it, she had already found the door to be open. It had been years since she was last here, at the place she called home. Now, close to a decade later, there was no place she could give that title to. Jumping off the ebony stallion, she trudged along the forest floor. Stumbling when she made it up the porch.

The moon was calling her, it's pull was enticing and gripping as the brunette fell to her knees clutching her chest. Immediately, upon seeing his daughter, Thomas rushed to her side.

"Faye, concentrate. Fight it off." He said as he reached into his satchel with gloved leather hands and pulled out a chain that seemed to glimmer underneath the red moonlight. As if the bloody light held no effect against it. The chain was made out of silver.

Faye hissed and snarled as her father tried to hold her down, binding her wrists and ankles together. Her immaculate skin burned against the cool, silver coated metal. Thrashing wildly, Faye growled viciously. Her eyes were both red, nails elongated and sharpened into claws while her fangs grew in.

"Faye concentrate!" Thomas pleaded, trying to break through the barrier the beast had already set up. Her clothes were beginning to rip, signaling that her transformation had just begun and was accelerating much more rapidly than usual. He gripped the chains, tightening their hold but in Faye's attempt to break free she thrashed her body around more forcefully, knocking her father across the room. Rendering him unconscious.

With the pull of the moon, Faye bounded off back into the forest. Her horse spooked by it's keeper's monstrous visage, fled. Running across the forest floor, her feet morphed into paws as did the rest of her body. Before she knew it, the animal that had taken over her body had led her to the outskirts of Chance Harbor. The townsfolk were alarmed and up in arms, everyone scrambled to return to the safety of their homes.

Except for one unfortunate girl who picked the wrong night to venture out alone. Through the corner of the wolf's burning red eyes, a head of blonde hair billowed through the night sky and into the fields. With a satisfied growl, the wolf took a whiff of the girl's scent and stalked after her into the night.


End file.
